Many studies show that individuals do not perfectly smooth consumption at older ages. We argue that an important explanation is that health status declines with age, making consumption at older ages less desirable. We incorporate health status into a standard incomplete markets life-cycle model,...

In this paper I study the nature of optimal factor income taxation in a neoclassical growth model where search frictions on the labor marker generate unemployment. I show that the introduction of search frictions changes the Chamley-Judd result of zero capital taxation as follows: if the...

The intertemporal labor-supply elasticity is often a central element in macroeconomic analysis. We argue that assumptions underlying previous econometric estimates of the labor supply elasticity are inconsistent with incomplete-markets economies. In particular, if the econometrician ignores...

We use the neoclassical growth framework to model international capital flows in a world with exogenous demographic change. We compare model implications and actual current account data and find that the model explains a small but significant fraction of capital flows between OECD countries, in...

Swedish census data and tax records reveal an astonishing wage compression; the Swedish skill premium fell by more than 30 percent between 1970 and 1990 while the U.S. skill premium, after an initial decline in the 1970s, rose by 8-10 percent. Since then both skill premia have increased by...

We document a clear increase in Swedish earnings inequality in the early 1990s, and that much of this increase was generated by movements in and out of the labor market. Inequality in disposable income and earnings net of taxes and transfers also increased, but much less than the increased...

In an economy with distortionary taxes on labour, can subsidies on day care, financed by increased taxes, raise welfare by encouraging women with small children to work? We show, within a stylized life-cycle framework, that the Ramsey optimal policy consists in equalizing consumption/leisure...